“Why, yes, I am. Want to come along?”
“Thanks a lot. I’ve got a business matter to attend to down here in a few minutes.” He hesitated a moment, then—“I know it’s none of my affair, but don’t you think it’s rather risky to go for a sail just now?”
Dorothy shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. There’s a two reef breeze blowing out beyond the Point, but that’s nothing to worry about. I’ve sailed all over Long Island Sound since I was a kid, and I’ve been out in worse blows than this, lots of times.”
“Maybe,” countered Bill. “Storm warnings were broadcast about an hour ago. We’re in for a northeaster—”
She broke in scoffingly—“Oh! those weathermen! They’re always wrong. It’s a perfectly scrumptious afternoon. The storm, if it comes, will probably show up sometime tomorrow!”
“Well,” he retorted, “you’re your own boss, I suppose.—If you were my sister,” he added suddenly, “you wouldn’t go sailing today.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m not your sister. Thanks for your interest,” she mocked. There was a hint of anger in her voice at the suspicion that Bill Bolton was trying to patronize her. “Don’t worry,” she added, resuming her usual tone, “I can handle a boat—Good-bye!”
Their eyes met; Bill’s gravely accusing, hers, full of defiant determination.
“Good-bye—sorry I spoke.” Bill turned away and walked up the beach toward the club house.
Dorothy chuckled when she saw him throw a quick glance over his shoulder. She waved her hand, but he kept on without appearing to notice the friendly gesture.
“A temper goes with that blond hair,” she said to herself, digging a bare heel into the loose shingle. “I guess I was pretty rude, though. But what right had he to talk like that? Bill Bolton may be a famous aviator, but he’s only a year older than I am.”
She ran the skiff out through the shallows and sprang aboard. Standing on the stern thwart she sculled the small craft forward with short, strong strokes, and presently nosed alongside the Scud. As she boarded the sloop and turned with the skiff’s painter in her hand she caught sight of Bill getting into an open roadster on the club driveway.
“I guess he meant well,” she observed to the wavelets that lapped the side of the Scud, “but just the same—well, that’s that.”
Making the painter secure to a cleat in the stern, she set about lacing a couple of reefs into the mainsail. Having tied the last reef-point, she loosened the skiff’s painter, pulled the boat forward and skillfully knotted the rope to the sloop’s mooring. Then she cast off the mooring altogether and ran aft to her place at the tiller.
The Scud’s head played off. Dorothy, as she had told Bill, was no novice at the art of small boat sailing. With her back bracing the tiller she ran up the jib and twisted the halyard to a cleat close at hand.
Then as the sloop gained steerageway, she pulled on the peak and throat halyards until the reefed-down mainsail was setting well. The Scud, a fast twenty-footer, was rigged with a fore-staysail and gaff-topsail as well, but Dorothy knew better than to break them out in a wind like this.
As it was she carried all the canvas her little boat would stand, and they ran out past the Point, which acted as a breakwater to the yacht club inlet, with the starboard gunwale well awash. The wind out here stiffened perceptibly and Dorothy wished she had tied in three reefs instead of two before starting. Her better judgment told her to go about and seek the quieter waters of the inlet. But here, pride took a hand.
If she turned back and gave up her afternoon sail, the next time she saw Bill Bolton she must admit he had been right. No. That would never do.
Although the wind out here was stiffer than she had imagined, this was no northeast gale; a good three-reef breeze, that was all. So lowering the peak slightly she continued to head her little craft offshore.
The Scud fought and bucked like a wild thing, deluging Dorothy with spray. She gloried in the tug of the tiller, the sting of the salt breeze, the dance of her craft over choppy seas. Glistening in the clear summer sunlight, flecked with tiny whitecaps, the landlocked water stretched out to where the low hills of Long Island banked the horizon in a blur of purple and green.
Now and then as she luffed into a particularly strong gust, Dorothy had her misgivings. But pride, confidence in her ability to handle her boat and the thrill of danger kept her going.
She had been sailing for about an hour, beating her way eastward with the Connecticut shore four or five miles off her port quarter, when all at once, somehow, she felt a change. The sunshine seemed less brilliant, the shadows less solid, less sharply outlined. It seemed as if a very thin gauze had been drawn across the sun dimming without obscuring it. Dorothy searched the sky in vain to discover the smallest shred of cloud.
At the same time the breeze slackened and the air, which had been stimulant and quick with oxygen seemed to become thick, sluggish, suffocating. Presently, the Scud was lying becalmed, while the ground swell, long and perfectly smooth, set sagging jib and mainsail flapping. Except for the rattling of the blocks and the creaking of the boom, the silence, after the whistling wind of a few minutes before, was tremendously oppressive.
Then in the distance there was a low growl of thunder. In a moment came a louder, angrier growl—as if the first were a menace which had not been heeded. But the first growl was quite enough for Dorothy. She knew what was coming and let go her halyards, bringing down her sails with a run. Now fully alive to the danger, she raced to her work of making the little craft secure to meet the oncoming storm.
She was gathering in the mainsail, preparatory to furling it when there was a violent gust of wind, cold, smelling of the forests from which it came, corrugating the steely surface of the Sound. Two or three big raindrops fell—and then, the deluge.
Dorothy rushed to a locker, pulled out a slicker and sou’wester and donned them. Returning to her place by the tiller, she watched the rain. Rain had never rained so hard, she thought. Already both the Connecticut and Long Island shores were completely blotted out, hidden behind walls of water. The big drops pelted the Sound like bullets, sending up splashes bigger than themselves.
Then suddenly the wind came tearing across the inland sea from out the northeast. Thunder crashed, roared, reverberated. Lightning slashed through the black cloud-canopy in long, blinding zigzags. The wind moaned, howled, shrieked, immense in its wild force, immense in its reckless fury.
A capsized sloop wallowed in the trough of heavy seas rearing a dripping keel skyward—and to this perilous perch clung Dorothy.
CHAPTER II
TAXI!
The black brush of storm had long ago painted out the last vestige of daylight.
Crouching on the upturned hull of her sloop, Dorothy clung to the keel with nerveless fingers, while the Scud wallowed in an angry sea laced with foam and spray. She knew that in a little while the boat must sink, and that in water like this even the strongest swimmer must quickly succumb. Cold, wet and helpless, Dorothy anxiously scanned her narrow horizon, but in vain.
For another half hour she hung on in the rain and darkness, battered by heavy combers that all but broke her hold. She was fast losing her nerve and with it the willingness to struggle. Phantom shapes reached toward her from the gloom. Strange lights danced before her eyes.…
With a rolling lurch the Scud sank, and Dorothy found herself fighting the waves unsupported. The shock of sudden immersion brought back her scattering wits, but the delusion of dancing lights still held; especially one light, larger and brighter than the others. Surely this one was real and not the fantasy of an overwrought imagination!
Half smothered in flying spume, the drowning girl made one last frantic effort to keep afloat. Above the pounding of the sea, a throbbing roar shook her eardrums, a glare of light followed by a huge dark form swooped down as if to crush her—and she lost consciousness.
Dorothy awoke in a darkness so complete that for a moment she thought her eyes must be bandage
d. Nervous fingers soon found that this was not the case, and reaching out, they came in contact with a light switch.
The sudden gleam of the electrics half blinded her. Presently she saw that she lay on a narrow bunk in a cabin. Presumably she was aboard a vessel, still out in the storm, for the ship pitched and rolled like a drunken thing, and the roar of a powerful exhaust was deafening.
Someone had removed her sweater, had tucked warm blankets about her body. Her throat burned from a strong stimulant which apparently had been administered while she was unconscious.
For some minutes she lay there taking in her surroundings. The charts tacked to the cabin walls, the tiny electric cookstove, hinged table and armsrack opposite. Listlessly she counted the weapons, four rifles, three shotguns, two automatics—and fastened in its own niche was a machine gun covered with a waterproof jacket. A complete arsenal.… The shotguns bespoke sportsmen, but this was neither the season for duck nor for snipe. Men did not go shooting in Long Island Sound with rifles, revolvers and a machine gun.… Bootleggers!
It came to her like a bolt from the blue. She was on board a rumrunner, no less, and notwithstanding the exhaustion she suffered from her battles with the waves, she found exhilaration in the exciting discovery.
Dorothy threw off the blankets, sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bunk. Her bathing suit was still wet and clung uncomfortably to her skin. With a hand on the side of the bunk to support her, she stood up on the heaving floor to catch sight of her face in a mirror screwed to the opposite wall.
“Gracious! I’m a fright,” she cried. “I don’t suppose there’s a vanity case aboard this lugger—and mine went down with the poor little Scud!”
Then she spied a neat pile of clothing at the foot of the bunk, and immediately investigated. A dark blue sweater, a pair of trousers, heavy woolen socks, and a pair of boy’s sneakers were seized upon and donned forthwith.
Dorothy giggled as she surveyed herself once more in the little mirror. “Just a few sizes too large, that’s all. But they’re warm, and dry, and that’s something!”
She rummaged about on a shelf, found a comb and with dexterous fingers smoothed her short damp hair into place, then with a sigh of satisfaction, muttered again to herself, “Much better, my girl.”
Her makeshift toilet completed, she decided to leave the cabin and continue her explorations outside.
There were two doors, one on the side and one at the end which evidently led forward. After a moment’s hesitation, Dorothy chose the latter. With some difficulty, for the ship still pitched unmercifully, she stumbled forward. Then, summoning up her courage, for she was not without trepidation at the thought of facing her desperado rescuers, she laid a hand on the knob and turning it, swung back the door.
Dorothy found herself in a small, glassed-in compartment, evidently the pilot house. She had hardly time to glance about, when an oddly familiar voice spoke from out the darkness. It was barely distinguishable above the motor’s hum.
“Please, Miss Dixon, snap off the light or shut the door. I can’t possibly guide this craft in such a glare.”
“Why, it’s Bill Bol—Mr. Bolton, I mean,” she cried in surprise, and closed the door.
“Himself in the flesh,” replied that young man.
She could see him clearly now, seated directly before her. His back was toward her and he did not turn round. So far as she could see he seemed very busily engaged, doing something with his feet.
“Then—then it must have been you who picked me up,” she stammered.
“Guilty on the first count, Miss Dixon.”
“Please don’t be funny,” she retorted, now mistress of herself once more. “I want to thank you—”
“You are very welcome. Seriously, though, it is the boathook you have to thank. Without that we’d both have gone to Davy Jones’ locker long before this.”
Dorothy was nearly thrown off her feet by an unusually high sea which crashed over the pilot house and rolled the vessel far over on her side.
“Whew—that was a near one!” the girl exploded as the ship righted itself.
“We’ll weather it, don’t worry,” encouraged Bill, though he did not feel the confidence his words proclaimed.
“It looks to me,” said Dorothy soberly, “as though we’ll be mighty lucky if we reach shore at all—and I guess you know it.”
“Never say die, Miss Dixon!”
“Suppose we drop this miss and mister stuff, Bill. Sounds rather silly at a time like this, don’t you think so?”
“Right you are, Dorothy. I’m not much on ceremony, myself, as the Irishman said when—”
“Look here, Bill!” Dorothy tossed her head impatiently, “I wish you’d omit the comedy—it really isn’t necessary. I’ll admit I was in a bad way when you dragged me out of the briny deep—and I appreciate your coming to my rescue. But you needn’t expect me to faint or to throw hysterics. That sort of thing went out of fashion long ago. Girls today have just as much nerve as boys. They don’t very often get a chance to prove it, that’s all.”
“Please accept my humblest apology, mademoiselle.” Bill’s eyes twinkled though his tone was utterly serious. “I can assure you—”
Dorothy’s merry laugh rang out—her mood had passed as suddenly as it had come. “Don’t be absurd. Tell me—why are you piloting a rumrunner?”
“Rumrunner? What do you mean?”
“If this isn’t a rumrunner, why do you carry that machine gun and the rifles and revolvers in the armsrack?”
“Just part of our equipment, that’s all.”
Dorothy’s impatience flared up again. “Why do you talk such nonsense?”
“Nonsense?”
“Certainly. You don’t mean to tell me that you took a boat of this size on long cruises!”
Bill grinned in the darkness. “But you see,” he chuckled, “this isn’t a boat.”
“Well, what is it then?”
“A Loening amphibian. Not exactly the stock model, for Dad and I had quite a few changes made in the cabin and this pilot’s cockpit.”
“What?” shrieked Dorothy. “An airplane—one that can land either on water or on land?”
“That’s right. The old crate has the hull of a boat equipped with retractible wheel landing gear which operates electrically.”
“You’re too technical for me,” she said frowningly, and balanced herself with a hand on the back of the pilot’s seat. “But if this is an airplane, why keep bouncing along on the water? I’d think you’d fly to land and have done with it.”
“My dear girl—” began Bill.
“Don’t use that patronizing tone—I’m not your dear girl—not by a long shot!”
Bill laughed outright. “My error once more. However, Miss Spitfire, when you learn to fly, you’ll find out that air currents are very like water currents. When it is blowing as hard as it is now, flying a plane is fully as dangerous as sailing a boat—more so, in fact. When the wind reaches a certain velocity, it is impossible to balance your plane. You have to land—or crash.”
Dorothy was beginning to understand. “Then you must have taken some awful risks coming out after me.”
“I was lucky,” he admitted. “But you see, even if we were able to fly in this gale, now, it’s quite impossible to take off in such a heavy sea. If I gave the old bus enough gas to get up a flying speed, these combers would batter the hull in—I’d never be able to get her onto her step. Some day, when it’s fine, and the water’s smooth, I’ll show you what I meant by that. Now all we can do is to taxi.”
“Taxi?—This is the first seagoing taxi I’ve ever been in!”
“In air parlance,” he explained, “to taxi is to run a plane along the ground or on the water—just now, it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“I should think it would be easier than flying.”
“Not on water as rough as this. Your legs go to sleep with the strain you have to put on the rudder pedals.”
“Yes.”
“Well, why don’t you let me help you? I’ll drive her for a while,” offered Dorothy.
Bill shook his head. “It’s terribly hard work,” he demurred.
“What of it? I’m as strong as an ox.”
“Thanks a lot. You’re a real sport. But the difficulty is in shifting places with me without swamping the old bus. She isn’t equipped with dual controls. There’s only one set of pedals, and as soon as I release them she will slue broadside to the waves, the wings will crumple, and she’ll simply swamp and go under.”
“And you must taxi either before the wind, or into the wind as we are now, in seas like these?”
“You’ve guessed it,” he nodded.
“But there must be some way we can manage it,” argued Dorothy. “You can’t keep on much longer. Your legs will give out and then we’ll go under anyway.”
Bill hesitated a moment. “Well, all right, let’s try it—but it’s no cinch, as you’ll find out.”
“That’s O.K. with me. Come on—orders, please—and let’s go!”
CHAPTER III
A WILD RIDE
“Hey, not so fast,” laughed Bill. “First of all, will you please step into the cabin, and in the second locker on your right you’ll find a helmet and a phone-set. Bring them out here. This shouting is making us both hoarse and we’ll soon be as deaf as posts from the noise of the motor.”
“Aye, aye, skipper,” breezed Dorothy, and disappeared aft.
In a minute or two she returned with the things he had asked for. Bill showed her how to adjust the receivers of the phone set over the ear flaps of her helmet. Then reaching for the head set at the other end of the connecting line, he put it on and spoke into the mouthpiece which hung on his chest.
“Much better, isn’t it?” he asked in a normal tone.
“It certainly is. I can hear you perfectly,” she declared into her transmitter. “—What next?”
“Come over here and sit on my lap.—I’m not trying to get fresh,” he added with a grin, as she hesitated. “I’ve had to make a shift like this before with Dad. There is only one way to do it.”
The Second Girl Detective Megapack: 23 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 161